Abstract
The following piece is a
semi-fictionalized accounting of the Stonewall Riots. For the purposes of my
saturation research paper, I “invented” an author named Frederick Wallace who
lived through the time of the Christopher Street Riots, as they were also called,
but due to a medical emergency, was unable to be in attendance. Instead, he
interviews a friend, Michael Fader (an actual human being, interviewed briefly
for Stonewall: The Riots that Sparked the
Gay Revolution by David Carter) and obtains his (fictionalized by Joe
Lawley) accounting of the events that took place over the span of six nights in
June and July of 1969. Though the controversial story never finds a publisher
at the time of its creation, Wallace is now—43 years later—publishing it in
light of the current Gay Rights movement and his prominent position within a
successful major publication.
Faded Pages Reveal an Un-Fading Fader
(A 43 year-old interview with one of
Stonewall’s original
participants)
By Frederick Wallace
I was a 22-year-old, fresh-faced
intern at the main offices of Harper’s
Bizarre in New York City during the long, hot summer of 1969. I had just
graduated, with honors, from the NYU School of Journalism in May, but my name
had yet to grace the bylines of any major publication in the city, let alone
the country or world.
Interning was about as typical as
you might imagine: getting coffee for overpaid dickheads, coming up with new
designs for lobby bulletin boards, and every now and then, someone would take
me aside and give me advice on how a “guy like me” could really get ahead in “a
place like this.” Little did they know, I had my own agenda.
Having lived my adolescent years
during the heart of the Civil Rights Movement, and having been an actual
attendee at the Woodstock Festival for peace and love, my goal was to change
the world with my words. As far as I was concerned, Harper’s was a stepping stone—a task necessary to complete and
obtain my actual sheepskin degree. I knew that publishing a self-assigned story
of my own interest would be next to impossible, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t
going to try. Lucky for me, it didn’t take long for inspiration to come.
I was about as “out” as a gay man
could be in those days—a regular on the free streets of Greenwich Village, I
frequented many of the gay-friendlier establishments that
popularized the area, including the Stonewall Inn. Aside from my family, I
considered my sexuality to be common knowledge among “the community,” but it
certainly wasn’t the time of rainbow flags and purple ribbons.
Having had the bad luck of stepping
on a rusty nail in my cousin’s driveway the week previous, I was laid up on the
third floor of Our Lady of Perpetual Peace with a nasty blood infection, and
thus, was restricted from going out on the night that the Stonewall riots
started. I did, however, have a number of friends who were there, including two
were detained by police and forced to prove their gender (they were
transvestites), before being rushed to the paddy wagon and booked downtown for
indecency (Carter 138).
When I heard the news via telephone,
I was outraged. It was my fight. It was my generation, and the one thing I felt
I was living to stand up for. Unfortunately, the amount of medication I was on
and my general state of health completely prohibited standing at all. But when
I returned home seven days later, and back to my coffee post at Harper’s, I decided if I couldn’t fight,
this was sure as hell going to be my story. And though it’s taken 43 years to
publish, I’m as proud of it today as I was of it then…
* * * * * * * * * *
(From July, 1969)
I suppose if you’re going to gay in
1969, the best place to do it is Greenwich Village in New York City. In fact, up
until last week, you’d have been hard pressed to find any homosexual living in
the area that didn’t think of the Village as somewhat of a “safe haven.”
However, considering the riots that took place on Christopher Street (and the
surrounding area) last week, that sentiment, and the idea that gays are “safe”
anywhere, really, is now seriously being questioned—and for good reason (Silver
1).
Michael Fader is 25 years old. At
18, he enlisted in the United States Army and served his country in Vietnam
before taking two bullets to the chest and being sent back home, with an
honorable discharge and a Purple Heart. Since then, Fader has been employed
full-time doing maintenance in the Macy’s building on Fifth Avenue. Three
months ago, he saved a woman from certain death by warning her that her vehicle
was leaking gasoline when she pulled next to him at a service station. He walks
a sick neighbor’s dog twice a day, free of charge, and has done so for more
than six months now. And, in the early-morning hours of last Saturday, June 28,
1969, outside of the Stonewall Inn on Christopher Street, Fader was detained,
forced to disrobe in front of NYPD officers, and eventually charged with
indecency for wearing clothes that officers deemed “too feminine” for a man to
wear.
Lucky for Fader (and maybe the rest
of us), he wasn’t alone. Using the bar’s owners’ as their excuse, cops initially
entered and announced they were raiding the Stonewall on account of the fact
that the bar did not have a valid liquor license. Employees, anyone with a
question or without identification, and all men wearing women’s clothing were
arrested. When the tides turned against police, they retreated inside the bar,
locked the door, and waited for reinforcements to arrive. “After the trapped cops were rescued by the
riot police, a game of cat and mouse was played out over succeeding nights
between protesters and law enforcement for control of the streets surrounding
the Stonewall” (Carter
“Stonewall Stories” 1).
I sat down with Fader on what seemed
like the first quiet night in the Village since the riots began, July 4th,
to find out exactly what happened, why it’s (hopefully) just the beginning, and
why fireworks are an appropriate celebration for what might be the “first Gay
Independence Day.”
Q (Wallace): As a gay
man, how would you define your idea of “safety” on the streets of the Village?
A (Fader): As a gay man, I do not feel safe anywhere,
really. I guess I feel most at home in the Village, but even there, safety is
not guaranteed. A couple of weeks before the incident at the Stonewall, I found
a pamphlet on the ground outside of a coffee shop. It said things like “Do not confuse
the ‘hippy set’ with the ‘gay set,’” and
“There are many hippies in this area, who while they may dress in a ‘gay’
fashion, are actually quite opposed to any gay advances” (Coleman 1). Can you believe an actual, printed-on-a-press
pamphlet had been produced and distributed to multiple people that contained
such closed-mindedness? And this is supposed to be some kind of a safe haven?
Q:
As of now, a sexual act between two men is illegal, and homosexuality is
listed as a mental illness with the American Psychiatric Association (Silver 1). Two months ago, Canada enacted a Reform
that aimed to fix such issues within our neighboring country to the north (Kinsman
1). Can you imagine something like that
taking place here, in the U.S.?
A: Just so you
know, it is also illegal to cross-dress and even to dance with another man (Cusack 1). “If you [stand] on the corner with another man for more
than five minutes, [you'll] get hit in the legs with a nightstick by a cop saying,
‘Move on, girls,’ or [you’ll] get arrested for congregating” (Dooley 1). But I can see a reform taking place now—if
you asked me the same question a couple of weeks ago, I might not have had the
same answer. But there’s a certain solidarity now, you know? We’ve taken a
stand. And it’s not going to stop here. All this talk about “civil rights” for the
last fifteen or twenty years… how about our civil rights?
Q:
Speaking of Civil Rights, we’re moving into the 1970’s, and names like
“Martin Luther King, Jr.” and “Rosa Parks,” and places like Birmingham,
Alabama, have all become a certain kind of slogan for the Civil Rights
movement. Do you think the word “Stonewall” will end up with a similar fate?
A: I think any
person, place, or thing that inspires people to live openly and love themselves
on such a large scale will be remembered, whether that’s right now or at some
point in the future. I mean, they have the Iwo Jima memorial statue with five
soldiers raising the American Flag—I think we need a similar statue in front of
the Stonewall, only ours could be the scene of five very different soldiers
using a broken parking meter to tear down the Inn’s front door (Carter
“Stonewall Stories” 2). That happened, by
the way.
Q:
What else sticks out in your head from that night?
A: I remember
talking to one of the officers for about fifteen minutes before the raid
actually got underway. I thought he was gay! Four of the cops came in early to
do a little… ah… “undercover” work, I suppose. They were in plain clothes,
mingling with everyone, chatting it up. It wasn’t until after the uniformed
officers came in and the ones in plain clothes began to point-out offenders for
arrest that anyone realized who they really were (Carter 139).
And
I remember a lot of breaking glass. Lots and lots of breaking glass—windows,
bottles, car windshields. At one point, a uniformed officer tried to stand upon
the bottom of an overturned garbage pale in order to get a better view of the
riot’s extent. No sooner did he stand on both feet than did two guys snatch the
can from beneath him and hurl it through a second-story window (Carter 159).
But to define it all as “anger” seems… off.
“We all had a
collective feeling like we’d had enough of this kind of shit. It wasn’t
anything tangible anyone said to one anyone else, it was just kind of like
everything over the last few years had come to a head on that on particular
night in that one particular place, and it was not an organized demonstration.
It was spontaneous. That was the part that was wonderful. Everyone in the crowd
felt like we were never going to go back. It was like the last straw. It was
time to reclaim something that had always been taken from us.” (Fader in Carter
160).
Q:
Why the Stonewall Inn? Aside from the invalid liquor license, why did
cops choose this place for raid?
A: The
police chose to raid the Stonewall for a number of reasons. Aside from their
irrational fear of gay culture, the Stonewall is supposedly owned by mafia big
wigs—who knows? But more than that, the Stonewall lets us dance, slow
dance—with each other. Even the other “gay friendly” places don’t do that. And
just for that reason, the Stonewall attracts a huge spectrum of people who are
sexually different, from all walks of life: the most normal through the most outrageous
(Carter
“Stonewall Stories” 1).
Q:
The riots ended up lasting a total of six nights. Why did the
demonstrating continue past the first night?
A: The
Stonewall was small, and in relation to the size of the gay population in the
entirety of the city, there weren’t all that many people there on the first
night. Throughout the next day, word spread like wildfire about what had
happened the night before. While the streets were being swept and windows of
the Inn were being boarded up, many gays started making their way toward
Christopher Street in a show of solidarity. Maybe some sensed, or wanted, a
follow-up. People began painting slogans and hanging signs. Before night fell,
Saturday’s crowd was bigger than the one that had formed on Friday (early Saturday
morning)
(Carter 180).
Q:
There’s been a lot of talk that the first night was about freedom, but
the subsequent nights of rioting were more about anger. Thoughts?
A: I
think the whole thing—all six days and nights—were about freedom. I do think, however,
that a lot of people had a lifetime of anger inside of them when they showed up
on the second or third or fourth nights—and they were there with the specific
intention of ridding themselves of that anger’s weight. I remember, at one
point on Saturday night, a police officer grabbed a friend of mine and raised
his club in the air to strike. As he was about to come down hard with
his weapon, my friend screamed “How’d
you like a big Spanish dick up your little Irish ass?!” The cop dropped his
club, mid swing, allowing his soon-to-be victim escape. I also heard another
story about two officers chasing about a hundred guys down Waverly Place until
one of them realized they could turn the tables by turning around and chasing
the officers instead. They could be heard for blocks screaming “Catch them!
Fuck them!” (Carter
181). So, yes, perhaps there was more
anger, but it came from a place of hurt and fear, not hate.
Q:
Why do you think that “fear” of gay culture (that you mentioned before)
exists?
A: It’s
not as much about fear as it is misunderstanding. Along with Black Civil
Rights, you began to see things like black people in magazine ads and on
television programs. But even the gay-friendly medium of the Broadway stage
refuses to acknowledge its gay characters. Take “Hair” for example—a huge hit in ‘67—but even one of the show’s main
characters, Woof, is very much closeted on the stage when his character is
clearly gay in the script (Colman 3). I
think when gay culture becomes more mainstream, people will stop “fearing” it.
People fear what they do not know.
Q:
Where do you see the future of gay rights heading?
A: I’ve heard lots of talk about the formation of a
“Gay Liberation Front” forming, and a few guys are supposedly trying to put together
a mainstream gay newspaper or magazine (Carter “Stonewall Stories” 1). This is a new generation of gay—one that
doesn’t want to hide. Maybe by the turn of the century, we could live in a
different world. Here’s hoping…
* * * * * * * * * *
It has been
42 years, 10 months, and two days since I sat down with Michael Fader to
discuss the Stonewall Riots and his predictions for the future of the gay
community. Since then, I’ve spent the majority of my time freelancing stories
for magazines across the globe and trying to put a little “gay” into the
mainstream media. Meanwhile, the Stonewall Riots have become a legendary part
of the Gay Rights Movement: June 28th
is now a worldwide Gay Pride holiday celebrated with parades and parties in
almost every major city and the name “Stonewall” has, indeed, taken its place
in the history of Civil, if not Human, Rights. In addition, four states have
legalized the ability of gay couples to marry (though only two other states and
the District of Columbia recognize the marriages), dozens of others states
recognize or perform civil unions for same-sex couples, twenty states have laws
against anti-gay bias, three openly-gay members of Congress serve our country,
and a movie about gay rights activist Harvey Milk has won two Academy Awards
(Carter “Stonewall Stories” 1).
However,
we’ve got a long way to go. There is still a gaping hole where some form of
federal legislation needs to be put in place to protect the gay community, and
it seems nary a day goes by that we don’t hear yet another unfortunate story
about another gay youth who either killed or attempted to kill him or herself
based solely on bullying that extends from their perceived sexual preference.
I contacted
Fader a few weeks ago to inform him of my intent to publish his story. I
remember, at the time, he was happy to be my subject but seemed more and more
relieved each time I told him about a rejection letter I received in response
to my submitting “our Stonewall story.” While he was excited to hear that his
words would finally see the light of day, he opted instead to use someone
else’s words to express his feelings, unique gratitude, and, hopefully inspire
a younger generation to live happily. He emailed me the following quote from 21st
Century philosopher, Richard Rorty:
“Solidarity is not discovered
by reflection but created. It is created by increasing our sensitivity to the
particular details of the pain and humiliation of other, unfamiliar sorts of
people. Such increased sensitivity
makes it more difficult to
marginalize people different from ourselves by thinking ‘They do not feel as we would’,
or ‘There must always be suffering, so why not let them suffer?’
This process of coming to see other human beings as ‘one of us’ rather than as
‘them’ is a matter of detailed description of what unfamiliar people are like
and of re-description of what we, ourselves, are like.” (Rorty in Chan 1).
Perhaps we’re not that different after all.
**Appendix
One of the most
vital sources used to construct this saturation research paper was Stonewall: The Riots that Sparked the Gay
Revolution, a book by David Carter—probably the most definitive source that
I was able to locate in regard to the riots that took place during the summer
of 1969. In fact, while researching the incident(s), Carter’s name comes up as
the author of a number of credible, peer-reviewed sources that can be easily
located. Stonewall the book, however,
goes into the greatest detail of all, putting into context a time and place
that a reader would not be able to understand otherwise unless they too, had
lived through it. The text describes the six nights of protest in detail,
mainly through interviews with a number of participants, one of whom had his
name borrowed and story fictionalized (without permission) for the preceding
story.
Works
Cited
Carter,
David. Stonewall: The Riots that Sparked the Gay Revolution. St.
Martin’s Press.
New York: 2004.
Carter,
David. "Stonewall Stories." Advocate 1027/1028 (2009): 94-99.
Academic
Search Complete. Web. 10 Apr. 2012.
Chan, Phil C. W. "Protection of Sexual Minorities since
Stonewall: Their Lives,
Struggles,
Sufferings, Love, And Hope." International Journal of Human Rights
13.2/3
(2009): 129-141. Academic Search Complete. Web. 6 May 2012.
Colman, David. "Based On A Truly Gay Story."
Advocate 1030 (2009): 69-71. Academic
Search
Complete. Web. 6 May 2012.
Cusac, Anne-Marie. "The Promise Of Stonewall."
Progressive 63.8 (1999): 10. Academic
Search
Complete. Web. 6 May 2012.
Dooley, Savannah. "Stonewall Revisited." Advocate
941 (2005): 36. Academic Search
Complete.
Web. 6 May 2012.
Kinsman,
Gary. "Queer Liberation." Canadian Dimension 44.4 (2010): 19-22.
Academic
Search Complete. Web. 10 Apr. 2012.
Silver,
Diane. "Stonewall's Unfinished Revolution." Lesbian News 34.12
(2009): 14.
Academic Search Complete. Web. 6 May
2012.
